eSafety at home

eSafety- more opportunities?

At school your children have limited access to electronic media. We do not have to make sure there is no access to overage DVD's, check the mobile phone for unsuitable websites, make sure that the console games are suitable for the age group. Our internet feed is strictly filtered to a very high level.

At home there are many opportunities for children to be exposed to unsuitable material through a wide variety of media. With the proliferation of devices, many of them situated in children's bedrooms, it is quite possible that access may be made to unsuitable material without parents ever being aware that this is the case. The most common example is a television in the bedroom, a relatively common occurence nowadays, yet there are many unsuitable programmes after the 9pm watershed on terrestrial television, and unlocked digital tv's give a much greater variety of programming.

The internet is also finding its way into children's bedrooms. If the access is unfiltered the child may unwittingly come across unfortunate images. They may also sign up to social media websites, such as Facebook, which are blocked at school. Parental monitoring and a filtered internet feed can reinforce the eSafety messages from school.

The only long term solution to eSafety is to build the child's own knowledge of what is safe and what is unsafe. They need to self monitor and think before they use digital media, be it TV, game or internet.